6/25/07

Six more months to Christmas! Of course the only reason I point that out is this is the furthest we can possibly be from then. I hate Christmas. But enough of that, here’s what happened over the weekend. Damned little. My brother came to town on Saturday but we weren’t sure what time he was going t arrive. I stuck around the house to help mom get the place ready. Yeah, this is the brother from Austin, the one I have referred to as “my sibling” from time to time, the one who pissed me off Christmas 2003 and caused me to buy that Cobra, the Cobra I sold on his birthday just to spite him, I'm over it now though. Anyhoo, mom still feels obligated to put the best face forward when he’s in town even though it is his wife who looks down her nose at us and she wasn’t going to be there. Ok, where was I? So I don’t go to the shop Saturday because he’s going to be there eventually. John had called Friday night to back out of Saturday’s shop event but tentatively set us for Sunday. It was cool because of the pending visit by the brother. He, my brother that is, arrives around 1830 h and we all go out to eat. After dinner, he and I watch “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior” back to back. I guess it takes multiple viewings, or perhaps seeing it “first run” on the big screen back in ’82, to really appreciate the awesomeness of “TRW.” I still say it is one of the greatest films ever. I must admit that “MM” is a bit slow and tedious in the middle, but it is still a great film as well. When it was all said and done, I ‘splained the plot of the third film, “Mad Max, Beyond Thunder Dumb,” er, I mean Dome, up to the point where Max fights Master Blaster, and got just as bored with telling it as he was with listening. “MM, BTD” is not one of my favorite films. We finally called it a night after flipping through the TV channels once or twice. Sunday morning I got up and mom and I saw him off. I headed to the shop around 0900 h after sending John a text message asking him to call me when/if he was headed down. My thinking was thus, if I heard from him or if he was there, I'd stay and work. If not, I'd jump in either the Seven or Mr. Wiggly and go see Ray and Pat at the Motorsport Ranch. John was not there when I arrived and I didn’t really feel like pulling the Seven out of storage. I hopped in Mr. Wiggly and headed for the gas station. I filled the tank and went to record the mileage. It had been exactly one month since I filled up. That was exactly one month after the fill up before it. One month before that, another fill up occurred. It went on like that for the last eight or so months. I thought it was interesting. When I had it all recorded, I turned the key and it just clicked. “Damn it!” I said and hopped out to check the connection at the firewall. Yep, the connection was bad. I cleaned it and reassembled the bits. Turn the key and, nothing. I clean the connection some more and reassemble it with a different “clocking” of the main battery cable. This time when I hooked up the negative terminal the starter began to spin. I'm glad it wasn’t in gear! I looked and sure enough, I had the battery cable touching the wire going to the starter. I re-reclocked the main cable and tried again. No starter when the negative cable was connected, yes starter when I turned the key. Success! I put away the tools and headed out. I went ahead and rolled to the Ranch. Pat wasn’t there but I spoke to Ray for a while. He’s still going to let me use the trailer and Pat is still planning to go with me as far as he knows. I'll call Pat later in the week to reconfirm and stuff and things. Ray started working on reassembling the Subaru wagon so I decided to head out. Oh, the problem with the wagon was several teeth were stripped off of the timing belt for the driver’s side head. Just thought you might like to know. So I hop back in Mr. Wiggly and hope he’ll start. He does and I head north. I get back to the shop and have a look at George. I grok the DCOE to SU manifold thing where I was thinking about adding a butterfly and see that I cannot do it. The runner is too short to get in there and make it work. I'll finger out something for boost mixture setting, probably. I move on to the battery. I open the rollup door and the trunk of the car. The location where I'd like to mount the battery is nowhere near flat enough for my liking. I decide to move behind the passenger seat. While I'm out back however, I attempt to pull out the dent in the rear panel with the slide hammer. Nothing doing! For as flimsy a car as a 1200 is, it just laughed at my attempts. I looked at it again and decided it wasn’t that bad. I took the battery box and hold-down clamps to the passenger door and had a look at the situation. I decided that I'd drill a hole in the box and let the bolt for the exhaust system poke up inside. I'd then take the two hold-down rods and poke them down through holes in the box and the floor. These will secure both the battery and the box to the chassis and the strap will hold the lid down. Of course I don’t have a battery yet so it is all just loosely installed at the moment. Next, I installed the ring terminal on the end of the negative battery cable and bolted it down to one of the seatbelt anchors for the rear seat. I ran the positive cable under the passenger seat, up the firewall, through the main harness grommet, and down to the starter. I cut it to length and pulled it out again. I installed the ring terminal on it and taped it up with electrical tape. To keep this rather important bit of insulation from coming loose, I also put a zip tie around the last bit of the tape where it would begin to unravel. I should do that with all harnesses but I don’t. Next, I stole the starter off of Gigi's engine and cleaned it up some. I installed it and tightened the clutch slave while I was under the car. The ring terminal for the positive battery cable was too big and thick to get a good thread engagement so I sat back for a better look. I found a nut with a tapered cone on one end and tried it in the hole. The taper was perfect for centering the ring, and it would help bottom out both that ring and the one for the main wiring harness. I installed it. It looked good and tightened up nicely. I hooked up the starter wire from the ignition switch and stood back to assess the work. I'm getting dangerously close to finishing this project. I need to poop or get out of the Ganges about the 4.11, install the drive shaft, fill the transmission with oil, fill the engine with oil, wire and plumb the gauges then install them, get a battery, and dump in some gas then I think I'm ready to try and start it. Yikes! I need to sit down. I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.